Report to Mayor and City Council
Tuesday, December 01, 2020
Discussion
SUBJECT:
Title
CONSIDER AWARDING AND APPROVING: (1) CONTRACT SERVICES AGREEMENT WITH LEAL TREJO, APC; (2) AMENDMENT NO. 1 TO CONTRACT SERVICES AGREEMENT WITH BOUCHER LAW; (3) CONTRACT SERVICES AGREEMENT WITH BATZA & ASSOCIATES, INC., FOR PROVISION OF ON-CALL EMPLOYEE RELATIONS INVESTIGATION SERVICES (CITY COUNCIL)
Body
I. SUMMARY
The City has utilized various third-party consultants for employee relations investigations and related matters in the past. As an initial measure, in 2019, staff solicited interest from investigators recommended by the City Attorney's Office or senior staff in other cities, and two firms were retained under City Manager contract authority (Harris & Associates and Boucher Law). Subsequently, pursuant to City Council direction and in accordance with the City's purchasing ordinance, staff issued a Request for Qualifications ("RFQ") to retain an on-call panel of firms.
Staff issued the RFQ (Exhibit No. 1), evaluated the 15 proposals received in response using an internal panel, and on September 1, 2020, recommended that the City Council award contract service agreements to the four highest rated attorney firms and the one highest rated non-attorney firm according to staff's Internal Panel Rating Worksheet (Exhibit No. 2).
There is no set number of firms that were required to be selected. In the past, the City used one attorney firm for employee investigations. On the other hand, having multiple firms available might facilitate multiple simultaneous investigations. And there is no obligation to use all of them if the need is not there. In this case, staff used the ratings to find a natural break in the scores and recommended those top law firms whose scores were close. As it turned out, four attorney firms had scores in the top cluster of attorney firms, and one non-attorney firm was the high scorer by far above the other non-attorney proposers.
The City Counc...
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